Bronx Premises Liability Law Blog

Premises liability law revolves around the truism that property owners have a responsibility to make sure that people who come onto their land or into their building have a right to expect that they will be safe from foreseeable injury.

A hospital in Ohio is now battling claims that it did not provide a safe environment for patients because at least four of them contracted Legionnaire's Disease while they were there. This story is beneficial to Bronx readers because it is a good example of how two sides can see the same facts in a premises liability incident, but can still interpret them differently.

Most people think that dogs are charming, warm-hearted creatures. While that view may be true for many individual dogs, it does not reflect the reality that dogs can also be dangerous.

New York residents may have already heard about the television news anchor in Denver who was recently the victim of a dog attack while she was live on the air. Her sad and frightening story should be a reminder that dog bites and attacks can happen to almost anyone and can involve almost any kind of dog, regardless of how sweet and docile the dog may seem.

In a slip and fall case, the plaintiff usually claims that the defendant did not take adequate precautions to warn the plaintiff of the dangerous situation that caused the plaintiff's injury.

But when does a property owner have a duty to warn a person and when should common sense dictate that the person realize on his or her own that there are dangerous conditions ahead?

Before answering that question, New York residents should consider the following story. A woman has filed a slip and fall lawsuit against discount giant Wal-Mart after she fell and hurt herself in a store in 2009.

New York residents have probably been following the news of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster with great interest. But here's some more unusual news involving a cruise ship; a woman died after a slip and fall accident aboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship.

The 47-year-old woman was on a five-day cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas. Early Monday morning, she was leaving the cruise ship's nightclub when she slipped and fell down a staircase. She hit her head in the fall and was taken to the ship's infirmary, but it seems there was nothing there that medical professionals could do to save her. She was pronounced dead shortly before 3 a.m.

Residents of several sections of Brooklyn are claiming that several pit bulls are on the loose in their areas and are putting pets and people at risk. A local representative has said authorities need to get their acts together and do what they can to get the dogs removed so as to prevent the possibility of a dog attack in the future.

Although pit bull advocates claim the breeds is misunderstood and that individual dogs are only vicious because they are raised that way, it certainly seems as though there are more reports of pit bull attacks than that are of attacks by any other breed of dog.

Sure, a lot of New York residents have slipped and fallen and then gotten up, brushed themselves off and walked away, hoping no one saw them. But it's just a fact that not every slip-and-fall incident can just be "brushed off." In some cases, people are very badly hurt after a slip and fall.

That's the case with the 49-year-old man was shopping at a Kroger grocery in May 2008 store when he slipped on some crushed fruit and fell on his back.

In previous accounts of dog bites that New York residents may have read about on this blog, it could seem like there is not much responsibility on the part of the dog owners. After all, how and why do these terrible dog attacks keep occurring? Shouldn't dog owners be doing more to keep their pets from hurting people?

Prosecutors in San Diego think so. They have brought involuntary manslaughter charges against a mother and daughter who owned the pit bulls that attacked a 75-year-old neighbor. The poor woman had to have an arm and a leg amputate and needed numerous surgeries after that. Even so, doctors could not save her and she died on Christmas Eve day.

No sooner had we finished telling you the most recent news on the tragic elevator accident that took the life of a New York woman last month when we learned of another similar fatal accident involving an apparently malfunctioning elevator.

This unfortunate elevator accident took place in San Antonio. There, a woman who worked as a housekeeper at a hotel fell down an open elevator shaft and was killed. The 65-year-old woman had worked hard for her employer for 12 years and left behind four grown children and 10 grandchildren.